Frank commentary from an unretired call girl

Lulu White

What it comes down to is this: the grocer, the butcher, the baker, the merchant, the landlord, the druggist, the liquor dealer, the policeman, the doctor, the city father and the politician—these are the people who make money out of prostitution, these are the real reapers of the wages of sin. – Polly Adler

Business was booming for the whores of late 19th-century New Orleans; there were some 2000 prostitutes and about 40 brothels scattered all over the city, and it is estimated that the gross income of the city’s sex trade at that time amounted to some $15 million per year (about $360 million in 2011 dollars!) Then, as now, this money flowed through the demimonde and into the conventional economy, enriching merchants, restauranteurs, liquor dealers, furniture stores, shoe salesmen, milliners and landlords, to name just a few. And considering that many of those businesses were owned by politicians (and the biggest landlord in New Orleans is the Catholic Church), there was a vested interest in keeping those businesses lucrative. So when the social purity movement reached New Orleans in the 1890s and pressure began to mount for something to be “done about” prostitution, Alderman Sidney Story proposed restricting it to one part of town. This was enacted into law in 1897, and the newspapers dubbed the resulting district “Storyville” (much to the alderman’s chagrin). One year ago today I published a short history of prostitution in New Orleans with emphasis on Storyville, and today I’ll tell you about one of its more famous denizens, a madam known as Lulu White.

Lulu White, circa 1900

Her real name was apparently Lulu Hendley, and she was born sometime before 1870 on a farm near Selma, Alabama; she was a quadroon (¼ black) or possibly a light-skinned mulatto, but she claimed to be from the West Indies and to have “not a drop of Negro blood” (though nobody who met her believed this claim). She arrived in New Orleans in the early 1880s with an older dark-skinned black man who is believed to have been her stepfather (though nothing else is known of him) and immediately began working as a whore, but so ambitious and charming was she that despite average looks and a short, dumpy figure she managed to attract a number of wealthy and influential clients including an oil man, a railroad tycoon and a department-store owner, and by the end of the ‘80s she was a madam with a house of her own. Further proof of her business skill can be discerned in the fact that, though she was arrested countless times in the ‘80s on charges ranging from disorderly conduct to pandering, by 1892 she had such political influence that her mansion at 166 Customhouse Street was assessed at a mere $300…while a much smaller and plainer house across the street was assessed at $1200.

The Arlington (left, with domed cupola) and Mahogany Hall (right, with tower)

But this house was itself small in comparison with Mahogany Hall, the $40,000 four-story brothel she built at 235 Basin Street (two doors down from The Arlington) when The District was organized in 1897. Mahogany Hall was an “octoroon parlor”, i.e. a bordello staffed by Creole girls of roughly one-eighth Negro blood; one of these girls, Victoria Hall, was so lovely that Lulu “borrowed” her photo for use in her own ad for the “Blue Book” of 1906 (in which she rather dubiously claimed to be 31, which would’ve made her a madam before she turned 15). Lulu made a tremendous amount of money, and spent much of it on clothes and jewelry; as Al Rose explains in his 1974 history Storyville, New Orleans:

Vivid is the recollection still alive in certain aging heads, of Lulu descending the “hall’s” swirling staircase, decked out in her gaudy display of diamonds, smiling her celebrated diamond-studded smile, and singing her favorite song, “Where the Moon Shines”. Attired in a bright red wig and an elaborate formal gown, she wore diamond rings on all her fingers (including thumbs), bracelets up both arms, a diamond necklace, a tiara, an emerald alligator brooch on her chest – the works!

Rose also notes that the 1934 Mae West film Belle of the Nineties was originally entitled Belle of New Orleans and was inspired by Lulu White’s life, but due to the pervasive racism of the time all racial references were suppressed. Forty years later, the brothel madam in Pretty Baby (1978) was also clearly inspired by Lulu; she wears a red wig and excessive jewelry, and her brothel has a swirling mahogany staircase.

Lulu was a savvy businesswoman who understood the value of diversification and had an appreciation for new opportunities; in 1906 she made a business trip to Hollywood (in her private railway carriage) in order to investigate the potential of the new technological innovation, motion pictures. She made deals for real estate and production facilities which would’ve made her the owner of the largest studio in town, then returned to New Orleans to get the funds together. But her next move was one of those critical mistakes which changes history: she trusted someone who proved untrustworthy, namely her “fancy man”, George Killshaw. He and Lulu had been together since soon after her arrival in New Orleans, but he was slim, handsome, charming and could easily pass for white, so when Lulu sent him to California to complete the deal for her with $150,000 in cash (about $3.6 million in today’s currency) he decided to drop out of sight and start a new life elsewhere, probably as a white man.

Strangely, Lulu made no effort to find him (probably because she didn’t trust the police), but picked herself up and resumed planning for the future (albeit on a smaller scale). In 1908 she built a saloon right next door to Mahogany Hall, at the corner of Basin and Bienville Streets; it opened for business in 1912, but with the arrival of Prohibition in 1919 it ostensibly became a soft drink bar. By this time, of course, Storyville had been closed (as I explain in last year’s column) to satisfy the prudery of the Secretary of the Navy, and due to the Hollywood disaster the bar was Lulu’s only remaining business. She secretly sold liquor there, but due to her reputation was repeatedly arrested throughout the ‘20s for violating the Volstead Act. Eventually she tired of dodging the cops, and in 1929 sold the building to Leon Heymann. It was one of the few Storyville buildings not bulldozed to construct the Iberville Housing Project in the 1930s, and though it lost its upper story to Hurricane Betsy the year before I was born, the lower story was refurbished and today houses a neighborhood market.

Lulu herself vanished from history after 1931, but is known to have been alive for at least ten years afterward because (as Rose reports) she made a withdrawal from her account at the Whitney National Bank in 1941 and was recognized by the teller; her fate beyond that is unknown, but at the time she would’ve been in her seventies and is not likely to have survived much longer. There is no death certificate on record in Louisiana, so it is possible she returned to her birthplace to die (though there is no death record in Alabama, either) or else succumbed in some public place and was never identified. What a sad end for one of the harlot queens of New Orleans; imagine how different Hollywood (and perhaps even America) might’ve been had its largest studio been owned not only by a black woman, but a proud and unrepentant whore!

44 Responses

A few points need to be made here, and this is a great article.
1) It’s all about the rationing of sex so men will tolerate relationships with women they otherwise wouldn’t if prostitution was legal and more widely available. It ensures most men will enslave themselves for even the promise of a fraudulent relationship for sex( e.g. many marriages today). Even if not married, it’s about limiting male sexual options when prostitution is cracked down upon. Even men who are able to easily bed beautiful women with few or no negative reprecussions and don’t seem to have there options limited by lack of prostitution have their options limited. If men had the sexuality of women, the human species would have died long ago. My opinion is that men who are on average more rational than woman on almost everything, but when it comes to romance and sex, men are on average are less rational than women. Our current culture encourages this much to many men’s detriment.
2) It’s also equally about destroying the competition, prostitutes of any race or other races of non-prostitute women who are easier to deal with as far as men are concerened, who free men from being enslaved by their sexuality. Prostitutes are on average prettier than non-prostitutes and are more likely to provide the kinds of sex men want. Most women hate the idea that not even briefly could most women ever be free and independent like most prostitutes. Most women don’t like competing against an out group such as prostitutes or even different races of women for their same race of men.Most women will destroy other women including other races of women or prostitutes of the same race in order raise their status and extract greater resources from men. Most men don’t like outside competition for women either to be fair & honest.
Prostitutes of any race and non-prostitute women of different races(or moral/religious beliefs) who are easier for men to deal with lower the value of non-prostitute women of any race or the race( moral/religious) of women who are difficult to deal with as far as men are concerened. Men like women or human beings in general will go with the easier option. Lack of prostitution or competing races( moral/religious) of easier women to for men to deal with allows women to become physically uglier, become more repulsive in personality and less loving to men with fewer negative reprecussions.
3) Although while I regard women as being more necessary for the human species or tribe to continue and reproduce, men are more necesaary for the building and protection of society or civilization. Few men are ever required to impregnate many women. However, there are a greater percentage of men who are geniuses and a greater percentage of men who are retards. The geniuses cause civilization to improve if they are good. Men form hierarchies and as long as most men’s needs are met, you have a strong and safe society. Most men’s value are as mental and physical beasts of burden and weapons of war. The ancient pagan Spartans were on to something when they would only give a headstone to men who died in war and women who died in childbirth by printing their names and the reasons of war and childbirth on the headstones; and, the others were left in unmarked graves. The current system emasculates men especially in regard to the current divorce laws, sexual harrassment laws and the unnecessary persecution of prostitution etc.,and will have a tendency to not only make women like, love and be attracted to their men less, but to also discourage men from defending women and children from internal or external predators.

My point which would be of most interest for you as a woman and as a former call girl is that non-prostitute women will be happy to destroy prostitution and other women(especially other races of women) in order to artificially inflate their value to men. They do not like the competition from prostitutes or other races of women. Men go after prostitution to either willfully and deliberately destroy other men or they are brainwashed fools and tools who work for their masters which are leading men and all women. More Men are slaves to their dicks then women are to their pussies because most men really don’t know how to please and attract women and men’s sex drive tends to be more instinctual( I want to eat when I’m hungry) and less emotionally driven.Women can get sex more easily if they want than men if their instinct needs to be “scratched” which their itches are less frequent and intense then men’s are. A woman can typically get her physical needs met from a man if not her emotional needs. A man who can’t get his emotional needs met from a woman is not likely to get his physical needs met and vice versa. More men hang themselves with their dicks than with a rope especially given the current legal and social climate Women are less likely to destroy themselves over what their pussy wants and the current legal and social climate protects them further. Even those men who do know how to seduce women especially when married may want to use prostitutes because a love affair or a one night stand is more likely to destroy their relationship when found out, and prostitution is more discreet than “amatuer love affairs” when not outed by the lawmen. Both men and women will destroy their competition which in this case is percieved as prostitutes and prostitute customers in order to gain more control and ensure less liberty. The only reason why people(especially Gentile White people) often keep their mouths shut about race is because it is legally and socially unaccetable today. Our ruling elite are engineering collapse and the loss of liberty in the ways I described above and others on this blog. and there are too many of their short sighted foolish minions following them to accomplish this.

Doc, the topic of the blog in general is prostitution, but the topic of THIS POST is Lulu White, an historical madam of a century past in Storyville, New Orleans. How does your reply relate to this specific topic?

She is a great “face” so to speak about how attempts to destroy her and prostitution in general is a bad idea for reasons I listed above and maybe for reasons I did not list for prostitutes and Johns at first, then the rest of society later because it is against human nature and liberty.

But nobody tried to “destroy” her. Her early success was assisted by officials and businessmen, and prostitution was tolerated in Storyville for 20 years until the federal government shut it down. Her legal troubles thereafter were due to violating Prohibition, not prostitution law.

You just admitted that the federal government shut down prostitution in New Orleans, not the local politicians and bussinessmen which either made her prostitution business illegal and forced it underground, or it forced it out of business. Either way she tried to provide services and products that the customer wanted be that prostitution or alcohol, and the tyrannical do- gooders of this world would have none of it. Anti-narcotics laws, Prohibition and anti-prostitution laws and their enforcement are bad for mostly the same reasons. If she had been allowed to operate legally, she would have most likely died a richer happier woman. The general population would have been better off because criminals are more likely to get involved with something once it’s been declared illegal. People who have any sense would know that the less the law and lawmen are able to interfere with one’s personal private affairs, the better off the people are.

I agree. What many people never realize is that the overwhelming majority and maybe all of the people would be better off if the government left the whores and the johns alone including people who had nothing to do with prostitution. Like I said before, look to their true motivations which are not necessarily the ones they are telling us. It’s all about competiition reduction and controling(enslaving) your enemies or percieved potential enemies if you can not destroy them outright is the goal of the would be tyrants or the actual tyrants.

The government and the ruling elite who control it would find it more difficult to control the men if they did not have help from the majority of women. This is why prostitution is declared illegal. The government controls the women by giving out no fault divorce while simultaneously all but guaranteeing her the right to the house and children with the child support for sex that the husband is no longer getting. There are other ways in which the government tries to make itself the REAL MAN to women as well such as sexual harrassment laws etc. The women control the men through sex. Prostitution breaks that cycle because it causes men to walk away from women they would otherwise never bother if it wasn’t for the men’s overwhelming desire to have sex with them. American men on average are more liberty loving than American women. Women seem to like security more even if it is false security as that is their nature. Women offer sex to men and men offer provision and security to women because that is what each party wants from the other. Prostitution therefore is in a sense a more dangerous weapon to the tyrants and would be tyrants than loaded guns with upset men with grievances are. If the government can not control the women, it probably could never control the men who are always more potentially dangerous to the government and tyranny. Government enslaves the men through the women and prostitution could disrupt this

I am an Ethiopian-American woman and I am amused by Lulu White’s story. For Black women in early 20th century America, whoring was probably the only high paying job available. The “White Slavery” panic of the early 20th century ignored women like Lulu White altogether, because back then the helpless victims were the White whores, whereas now in the early 21st century the “Human Trafficking” panic says the helpless victims are the nonwhite/immigrant whores – a total reversal.

Lulu White’s denial that she was Black is understandable given the times she lived in but still really silly and transparent. What would a White woman be doing running a brothel for biracial black whores only?

Lulu White’s denial that she was Black is understandable given the times she lived in but still really silly and transparent. What would a White woman be doing running a brothel for biracial black whores only?

To your question, “what would a White woman be doing running a brothel for biracial black whores only?” (although, interesting that you’ll say biracial black but deny Lulu possibly saying that she was biracial white)– research the Venerable Henriette Delille, an octoroon (1/8th black and in many cases considered legally white at this point) who founded Order of the Sisters of the Holy Family in New Orleans, an order of nuns for free women of color, women with whom she probably would not have socialized had she gone into the placage system as her mother wanted her to. The other side of the continuum from Lulu White yet such a fantastic complement.

As to her denial, well, there’s a lot of assumptions we have to make about her family background, etc. Most likely, especially considering her looks, if she was considered white, lived white, then guess what, she was white. There were plenty of people, yes even in the Deep South, who lived as whites and everyone in their community knew they had partial black heritage (not “passing”). How much that mattered to people quite often depended on the community and the person (or family’s) standing within it. That may not conform our modern-day sensibilities, but her story is hardly unique in that aspect.

aspasialibertine, I don’t “deny Lulu possibly saying that she was biracial white”. I never denied she said anything, and she never said she was a “biracial white”; she said she had “not a drop of Negro blood”, which I take to mean that she denied that she was biracial, unless she claimed to be biracial with some other, non-Black ethnicity.

I’m already aware of Henriette Delille.

“Most likely, especially considering her looks, if she was considered white, lived white, then guess what, she was white.” Lulu White wasn’t considered white; Maggie writes that nobody who met her believed her claim that she had “not a drop of Negro blood”, which means it was physically obvious that she was part black.

I’ve never heard of a White madam running a brothel or escort service for biracial Black women only (if one exists Maggie can correct me), and I doubt that would happen simply because a White madam could probably make more money by having at least one or a few White prostitute(s) working for her. Whereas an obviously biracial/Black madam like Lulu White back at the turn of the 20th century probably couldn’t find White women willing to work for her rather than for a White madam.

Due to the laws of the time, a Storyville brothel could employ white women or “colored” women, but not both. Both white and “colored” brothels only catered to white men; there was a separate, smaller district nearby which housed small brothels catering to black men.

I get the feeling that Lulu’s brothel was filling the gap that placage left when it fell into disfavor (hence the lack of white women there, perhaps?). I think you addressed that in a previous article, if I’m not mistaken.

Kinda-sorta. Plaçage was dying out by the time of the War Between the States due in part to increasing status and prosperity of Creole families, but once the vastly-more-racist Yankees took over the New Orleans economy after the war the fortunes of those families began to decline, and by the ’90s high-class prostitution was virtually the only way educated, sophisticated Creole girls could survive.

*nods* There are rumors on the Creole side of my father’s family that one of my great-aunts worked in a brothel (hell, she may have worked for Lulu!). Naturally, vehemently denied by most of my very religious family. I get into a lot of arguments with people (mostly one-droppists and “liberals” loaded with white guilt) who don’t understand the sharp dislike of Anglo-American incursion into Louisiana and how negatively that affected the mixed-race populations (and us, their descendants) from around that area.

I’ve been in similar arguments. Many of these people believe in a naive and simplistic “black hat/white hat” view of history which teaches that the South was an evil racist monolith and the North an enlightened abolitionist monolith, and they simply refuse to understand how much more racist the Yankees were than the population of antebellum New Orleans was, and how much worse off the Creoles and free blacks were in the second half of the 19th century than in the first half.

Thank you! I’m going to continue this conversation in email so that there’s not this ever narrowing response column. I love WordPress, but the way the responses get parented makes it difficult for me to read sometimes.

1. I used the word ‘if’. You skipped that part. She could have been considered white at another point in her life, hence her insistance on her blood status. But we don’t know, as, like I explained, the color line wasn’t always as well-defined and rigid as we assume it to be in that time.

2. “Physically obvious that she was part black” needs to be taken with a large grain of salt, which was my point. There are many instances during that time in which someone “looked physically obvious of being part black” when they weren’t. Sicilians, Greeks, Italians, East Indians, Lebanese, Syrians, and many other groups were often labelled the same way during that time period when they were anything but. “Eyeballing”, then and now, is extremely subjective.

To make this extremely simple: let individuals self-identify and let’s not assume anything about them.

Hey Maggie: I get about $500-1000 million for the industry in modern dollars, not $360 billion. Still a huge business that cities would be fighting over. Other than that niggling detail, I love these historical stories! Lulu’s story could make a good movie.

How could I have missed this? I’m not surprised that the Secreatary of the Navy did this to Lulu White and other prostitutes as a former military man. Most men want to get married and have children. They will fight ridiculously hard and follow orders that they even disagree with for either the overall good of their wives and children or the prospect of getting wives and children in the future. Prostitution may break these men’s loyalties to their wives and possibly children. At the very least, it breaks the idea of men wanting to get married or even wanting relationships with women they would have never bothered if it weren’t for the prospect of sex. The truth is many women swoon for men who went off to war. The truth is men are addicted to vagina more than crack addicts are addicted to cocaine.The military hands out extra money if the man gets married and has up to 3 children The military(and police) is all about getting the men to follow its authority and higher ranks. You can only control the men if you control the women. Since the government is the Real Man who is the protector and ultimate provisioner for women, and since men are addicts to womens’ vaginas and will tolerate almost anything to get them, and since men are more dangerous to the government and its controling ruling elite, if you get the men to not mind their loss of liberty for the pursuit of happiness(vagina), then you have control. The trick is to get him to either think he can have someone(a woman) special in his life or more rarely that he can be a cad player who can get women for little to nothing. Prostitution breaks this cycle and is a threat to the government and would be tyrants and tyrants. The trick is to get someone to fight for another’s interest and happily surrender his liberty. Of course our ruling elite and government hate prostitution Our ruling elite and the government is ingenius at taking our liberty, and use many tactics to do this. Anti-prostitution laws are just one of them. It’s all interconnected. Just follow the dots so to speak. This is a summary of what I wrote above.

Your argument doesn’t hold water; throughout most of history the military has been one of the largest supporters of prostitution, for obvious reasons. Daniels’ policies were wholly personal (he also forbade alcohol on ships), and were largely ignored after he left the position until the “sex trafficking” hysteria started a few years ago.

Throughout most of history, miltaries were run by masculine men who although harsh in discipline, truly cared about their men if for no other reason than they were afraid of what their men might do if they ever percieved that they were not cared about by their leadership. I’ve seen too many of our current leadership who care more about what the public image is or what the women think of them than the men under them despite the fact that it’s a majority of men in the miltary and without the men the miltary would cease to function effectively. Today’s military leadership both fears a bad public image and women more than the men under them. It also seeks the praise of its public image and women than the men under them. Also consider that the miltary is considerably more female today than it was in Daniel;s time, and that this has had an effect on the miltary’s position on prostitution. I bet Daniels got a lot of praise from women’s groups and church groups for doing what he did. Yes I know he was a moralist nut too. Consider Daniels a forerunner of today’s modern military leadership in many respects.

This is crazy, people back then was doing everything, ms, lulu was fabulous and cute, I never knew what went on in louisiana quardroon balls, the reason why I think she disappeared was because she was always in trouble with the shit she do,i cant knock her hustle, but dam she could have done enother job, instead of the prostitute route, but whatever, you said after 70 she didnt have much longer, honey stop smo king crack, theres people in there 80s,90s, and somtimes 100$ like members in my own family who lives a long time, and peoplecan die young so it works both ways, with all the s.t.d.s in the world im suprised she lived that long, I think its disgusting what she was doing, but theirs noway she just disappeared into thin air, I think she changed her name obviously thats why nobody could find her, anyway she changed her name changed her hair, changed her appeara/ce and thats thats, she probably went with family or somebody, the reason why nobody could find her was the name she probably got married anything but somebody knows where she was, somebody always knows somerhing the police was after her so she ated fast, but good story but she know what she eas doing so what goes around comes around thats a fact, god bless

I had family members that worked on Basin Street back in the early 1900’s. My Great Great Uncle was a piano player and his brother was a dish washer, and when they started closing the Brothels down, they lost jobs and their livelihood. It’s really sad to hear about the demise of Storyville.

I wrote about Storyville back in 2008. Maybe I should write something about my folks that worked during that era.

I found your blog while researching an Octoroon $3 All Night coin I’d been given several years ago. You might say I came for the brothel and stayed for the Madam. Here’s hoping your research and writing about Miss White becomes the basis for a film or documentary and soon. I’m of mixed race, Melungeon to be specific. I was recently told I was successful due to “hybrid vigor”, a term usually reserved for describing mixed breed dogs … mutts. I can’t think of a better way to deal with kind of bullshit than to tell a few of us mutts’ stories … starting with this one about a real lulu of a human.

Whorish Media

Maggie on Twitter

Boring but necessary legal stuff

All original content on this website (i.e. all of my columns, pages and anything else which I write myself) is protected under international copyright law as of the time it is posted; though you may link to it as you please or quote passages (as long as you attribute the quote to me), please do not reproduce whole columns without my express written permission. In other words, you have to say "pretty please with sugar on top" first, and then wait for me to say "okey-dokey".